Alfred Snider

Do 1982 Photos Show Life on Venus?

2012-01-24T07:29:00.002-05:00

Russian scientist claims 1982 pictures shows 'life on Venus'

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an eminent Russian scientist, has claimed to have discovered life in Venus in grainy photographs taken by a Soviet probe three decades ago.

7:00AM GMT 24 Jan 2012

Prof Ksanfomaliti, from the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, analysed photographs taken by a Soviet probe that landed on the planet's surface.

The 79 year-old claimed the pictures, taken by the probe Venus-13 in 1982, show a giant scorpion-styled insect that he claimed proved to life on the scorching second-closest planet to the sun.

But the views of the member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published in Solar System Research, have been cast into doubt.

Experts say the features described as a disc and a scorpion appear to change locations from one photo to the next.

Prof Ksanfomaliti said the images show a scorpion shaped body, a disc and a "black flap" which apparently move as the probe's camera records the scene.

They all "emerge, fluctuate and disappear" explained Prof Ksanfomaliti.

"What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus, let's boldly suggest that the objects' morphological features would allow us to say that they are living," he tells the magazine.

No records have previously been found of life on Venus, which has a surface temperature of 464C and gravity 0.9 times more powerful than Earth's.

But Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, cast doubt on the claims.

The man who processes many of the images taken during NASA's Mars missions, said the higher-resolution versions of the Venera 13 images show that the crablike object is actually a mechanical component, not a living creature.

The same object shows up in a photograph taken by an identical landing probe, Venera 14, which landed nearby on Venus.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9034433/Russian-scientist-claims-1982-pictures-shows-life-on-Venus.html

NASA DEBUNKS LIFE ON VENUS CLAIM
http://en.ria.ru/science/20120125/170941972.html

20 Doctor Who Quotes for 2012

2012-01-11T13:43:00.000-05:00

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS: THE DOCTOR PRESENTS 20 QUOTES TO LIVE BY IN 2012

By Fraser McAlpine | Posted on Friday, December 30th, 2011

Recently BBC America and the global Doctor Who Facebook page asked fans to submit their favorite quotes from Doctor Who, seasons past, to contribute to a roundup of New Year wisdom, advice – words to live by, if you will – from the Doctor and his companions in 2012 and beyond.

As you can imagine, the response was swift and overwhelming, so here, in condensed form, is what we’re going to have to call The Tao of Who:

We’ll get started with one of our favorites: “A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.” – The Third Doctor, The Time Warrior

From the BBC America Facebook page:

“Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It’s not the time that matters, it’s the person.”
The Tenth Doctor, The Lazarus Experiment – nominated by Jennifer Phelps

“For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about.”
The Fifth Doctor, Earthshock – Matthew Rognstad

“There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t act a little childish sometimes.”
The Fourth Doctor, Robot – Melinda Botterbusch (this was a very popular choice, but Melinda was first to nominate it)

“Courage isn’t a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.”
The Third Doctor, Planet of the Daleks – Leo Sarmiento

“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
The Eleventh Doctor, Vincent and the Doctor – Courtney Davis

“Never ignore coincidence. Unless, of course, you’re busy. In which case, always ignore coincidence.”
The Eleventh Doctor, The Pandorica Opens – Kathy Quinn Hertzog

“One good solid hope is worth a cartload of certainties.”
The Fourth Doctor, Warrior’s Gate – Barry McCann

“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
The Eleventh Doctor, A Christmas Carol – Hayley Dennis

From the global Doctor Who Facebook page:

“Always take a banana to a party, Rose: bananas are good!”
The Tenth Doctor, The Girl in the Fireplace – Bethy Barnum

“You know when sometimes, you meet someone so beautiful – and then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick; but then there’s other people. And you meet them and you think, ‘Not bad, they’re okay,’ and then when you get to know them… Their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality’s written all over it, and they just – they turn into something so beautiful. Rory’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.”
Amy Pond, The Girl Who Waited – Katherine Pollock

“Our lives are different from anybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing. Nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing.”
The Second Doctor, Tomb of the Cybermen – Romalee Pomi

“Your life could depend on this. Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back, don’t look away, and don’t blink! Good luck.”
The Tenth Doctor, Blink – Karrie Sturgeon

“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
The Eleventh Doctor, The Wedding of River Song – Matt Jean-Lubin

“Go forward in all of your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”
The First Doctor, The Dalek Invasion of Earth – Phil Stewart

“There’s a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive… wormhole refractors… You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.”
The Tenth Doctor, Fear Her – Amy K Malcolm

“I am and always will be the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams.”
The Eleventh Doctor, The Almost People – Ned Thorne

“When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.”
Elton, Love and Monsters – Moira Weis

“You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand! You say no! You have the guts to do what’s right, even when everyone else just runs away.”
Rose, The Parting of the Ways – Mia Kaim

“There’s always something to look at if you open your eyes!”
The Fifth Doctor, Kinda – Earl Roggeman

“One may suffer a world of demons for the sake of an angel.”
Madame du Pompadour, The Girl in the Fireplace – Will Cole

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2011/12/new-year-resolutions-the-doctor-presents-20-quotes-to-live-by-in-2012/

The Five Most Common Deathbed Regrets and Me

2012-01-07T04:55:00.000-05:00

From a story at
http://www.ariseindiaforum.org/nurse-reveals-the-top-5-regrets-people-make-on-their-deathbed/

The five most common regrets people expressed as they died were:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Of course, the time to think about this is not as you are dying, but long before.

For myself:

1. I think I have lived a life true to myself. I have done what I wanted when I wanted to do it. OK, not always, but most of the time. I turned away from a prosperous life in business to be a debate coach and work with young people, and I have never regretted it. WIN

2. I have worked hard, but my work is also my love. I knew that I needed to have a way to make a living that was something I also loved, like teaching and debate training. Many have told me (hello, Sarah Jane) that I work too hard, but I don't see it that way, because it is my love. WIN

3. Courage to express my feelings? Well, I have done that and still often do that. My wish is that I had a better and more constructive way of expressing my feelings. TIE

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with friends? I could do this more and should do this more. However, I do see so many of my friends so often that I am constantly refreshed. Not all of them, of course, but many, many of them. I could do more. TIE

5. I wish I had let myself be happier? I am very happy. I am not sure how much happier I could be. I feel very lucky to have so many things go my way, so many things just seem to work out. Not everything has worked out, but most have and I am a very happy person. I let myself be happy. I worry if it is something I can do something about, and if I cannot fix it or help it, I don't worry about it. That is just me. I think that helps me be happy. WIN

3-0-2

Not bad, really. That makes me feel good. I am not planning on dying any time soon, so there is still time to mess it all up, but I will try not to. I will work harder on better ways to express my feelings and will try and stay in better contact with my many dear friends.

How is this list working out for you?

A Little Dab Will Make Them...Monster Soldiers

2012-01-06T18:12:00.001-05:00

Welcome to a brave new world: Genetic scientists create freakish man-made monster ants with huge heads and jaws

Ancient genes activated by dab of hormones
Ants seem to contain a 'toolkit' for creating monsters
May be a throwback to ancestors from millions of years ago

By ROB WAUGH

Last updated at 5:46 PM on 6th January 2012

Nightmarish 'supersoldier' ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by activating ancient genes.

Scientists believe the monster ants may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago.

Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone - the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.

A supersoldier next to a normal ant: Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone - the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants

Supersoldier ants can occur naturally in the wild, but only rarely. In the deserts of America and Mexico, their job is to protect the colony from raids by invading army ants.

The supersoldiers use their enormous heads to block the nest entrance and attack any enemy ants that get too close.

Scientists showed that ordinary ants of the species Pheidole morrisi contain all the genetic 'tools' needed to turn them into supersoldiers - they just need a hormonal push.

The research is reported today in the journal Science.

Scientists created the monster ants in the laboratory by activating ancient ancestral genes

Authors Dr Rajendhran Rajakumar, from McGill University, Canada, and colleagues wrote: 'We uncovered an ancestral development potential to produce a novel supersoldier subcaste that has been retained throughout a hyperdiverse ant genus that evolved 35 to 60 million years ago.'

The results suggest that holding on to ancestral development toolkits may play an important role in evolving new physical traits, say the researchers.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2082799/Supersoldier-ants-gigantic-jaws.html#ixzz1iiqrxfxB

Lost Doctor Who Found - Underwater Menace part 2

2011-12-23T10:04:00.001-05:00

Long lost footage from a Doctor Who series that is now found. The Underwater Menace. This is from part 2, with Patrick Troughton and a classic mad scientist.

Thanks to the BBC for this.

Real "Space Ball" Drops From Sky

2011-12-23T02:44:00.000-05:00

‘Space ball’ drops on Namibia

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, December 22, 2011

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.

Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said.

With a diameter of 35 centimetres (14 inches), the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of “two halves welded together”.

It was made of a “metal alloy known to man” and weighed six kilogrammes (13 pounds), said Ludik.

It was found 18 metres from its landing spot, a hole 33 centimetres deep and 3.8 meters wide.

Several such balls have dropped in southern Africa, Australia and Latin America in the past twenty years, authorities found in an Internet search.

The sphere was discovered mid-November, but authorities first did tests before announcing the find.

Police deputy inspector general Vilho Hifindaka concluded the sphere did not pose any danger.

“It is not an explosive device, but rather hollow, but we had to investigate all this first,” he said.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/22/space-ball-drops-on-namibia/

Dinner in the Air

2011-12-18T03:11:00.004-05:00

http://english.pravda.ru/photo/album/6350/

This dinner is not for the faint-hearted

Dinner In The Sky is a Belgian based novelty restaurant which used a crane to hoist its diners, table, and waitstaff 150 feet into the air. Forbes magazine called it one of the world's ten most unusual restaurants. Dinner in the Sky has mobile services available in 15 nations, and has operated in various cities including Paris and Las Vegas All photos: Splash/All Over Press

Engrish Hits for December

2011-12-14T16:16:00.002-05:00

http://engrish.com is one of the most entertaining websites in the universe.

It features poorly translated slogans from around the world. Every time I need a simple laugh I turn to it and am instantly rewarded.

Rockall Story Continues to Unfold

2011-12-11T08:49:00.001-05:00

Four countries struggle for tiny 'golden rock' in North Atlantic
22.11.2011

A fight over a tiny rock Rockall is unfolding In the North Atlantic. It is claimed by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland and Denmark. It is unlikely that a piece of land with the area of 570 square meters would have caused such an interest if it had not been for the oil found under it. Now the UN will decide who will be the proud owner of the "Golden Rock".

Rockall is the above-water area of the once-extinct volcano. There had never been fresh water there, hence, it was not livable. The only inhabitants of the island are guillemots, northern cormorants and other birds that stop at Rockall during their long flights. Some birds even build their nests on the cliff. At the same time there is plenty of fish and shellfish in the surrounding waters. The possession of seafood is another reason to fight for this area.

Rockall is referenced in Irish medieval folklore. There, it presents a mythical stone "Rocabarra" which should appear before the doomsday. As for the scientific description of the rock, it was fist mentioned in 1703 by a Scot Martin Martin. He also pointed to the existence of the Irish legend of the "Rocabarra."

Centuries went by, and Rockall acquired a reputation of a deadly place. For example, in 1686 a fishing boat was stranded in its vicinity. In 1812 a research ship "Leonidas" sank near it, and 12 years later - brigantine "Helen of Dundee." In 1904, near Rockall "Norway" ship crashed on its way to New York. Then 635 people were killed and 150 managed to escape.

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No one was in a hurry to formalize the sovereignty over the ill-fated rock. Hardly anyone could resist the mistress of the seas, England , especially considering that Rockall lies not far from the British shores. But the British did not do so until 1955, when its officers arrived on the island and installed the UK flag and navigational beacons. In 1972 the accession of Rockall to the Scottish community Harris was announced.

Since then, however, the lighthouses broke down, but no one dared to take the flag off. The British did not take particular care of the rock and even choose not to register their rights to Rockall through the UN. They reinforced the sovereignty in strange ways. In 1975 two Marines came here for a photo shoot for a couple of hours. 10 years later, a retired British soldier lived on Rockall in a wooden box screwed to the rock for six weeks.

The first people to encroach British sovereignty over the islands were the activists of "Greenpeace". Three environmentalists settled on the island for 42 days to protest the British oil exploration ongoing in this area. Representatives of the "Greenpeace" declared the island "a new global state of "Waveland". Anyone could become its national. The political circus, however, did not last long.

Rockall would have remained either formally British, or nobody's if the scientists had not begun to study the shelf around the rock to see if there was oil there. The oil was found, and, according to British experts, it may replenish the treasury of the United Kingdom by 100 billion pounds. It seems that there are also gas fields. Then other countries began to fuss.

Ireland, Iceland and Denmark have decided to challenge the British right to explore the mineral resources and marine fishery near Rockall. Icelanders and the Irish made a corresponding claim in the relevant commission of the UN. The United Kingdom followed the suit. Denmark joined the claim as well. It is expected to formalize all the documents by 2014.

Each side has their own arguments. Britain claims that the nearest territory to Rockall area is the island of Hirt located at the north-west coast of Scotland. It is 300 kilometers away from Rockall, while Ireland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands that belong to Denmark lie a little further. The English believe the rock to be an island; hence all the waters around it are to become the exclusive economic zone of the UK.

In contrast to the neighbors, Ireland is trying to prove that the Rockall is not an island but a rock. Under the international law, there can be no territorial waters around the rock. This means that the shelf shall be shared based on the distance from the shores of a country. The Irish claim that Rockall is the closest to their country. The coast of the UK is further, and the island of Hirt formally related to Scotland should not be taken into account.

Denmark has the weakest position in this dispute. The main part of the country is far away, and it can "cling" to Rockall only through the possession of the Faroe Islands located to the north of the rock. The Danes claim that there is an underwater micro-continent "Faroe Islands - Rockall Plateau." If so, then Denmark can claim not only the shelf near the Faroe Islands, but also near Rockall.

In turn, Iceland has little interest in the ownership of the rock. The northerners are fighting only for the delineation of an underwater shelf near it so that they can claim a piece. Icelanders began working on the preparation of their application to the UN back in 2001, and were the first ones to file. In addition, it was Island that initiated negotiations on the controversial issue, and therefore, perhaps, the UN will appreciate its amicability.

The negotiations have been ongoing for five years now, but a compromise has not been reached. Denmark, Iceland and Ireland periodically discuss this issue without the participation of the UK, but there is no united front against the British. The situation would hardly escalate to a war. However, no one wants to share the oil and seafood. Rockall has the potential to become a new arena of international dispute that would unlikely be resolved without the participation of the UN.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/22-11-2011/119705-rockall_atlantic-0/

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Martian Railroad

2011-11-08T06:30:00.002-05:00

Railway station and tracks found on Mars
02.11.2011 | Source:
Pravda.Ru

Joseph Skipper, a well-known US researcher, a virtual archeologist, found railway tracks, a railway station and a railway carriage on the photos of Mars.

Skipper is known for his meticulous studies of high-resolution Google Mars space images, Dni.ru website reports. This time, the researcher found a whole transport system on the photos.

Many are skeptical about Skipper's discovery. There is a dash line on the satellite images, but it was very brave of Joseph Skipper to call the line a railway. However, other scientists could not explain what the dash line could actually be.

The "tracks" stretch to Gale crater on the red planet. NASA plans to land its new rover in the area of the crater. The rover will be launched to search for water and life. The "railway tracks" start some 900 kilometers far from the crater.

The "archeologist" also discovered various constructions near the crater, which, as Skipper said, could be a railway station. He found a square-cut object not very far from the station. The object - most likely a railway carriage - is located right on the "tracks."

http://english.pravda.ru/news/science/02-11-2011/119503-mars-0/

More Awards for Burlington Downtown

2011-10-30T14:13:00.001-05:00

Burlington earns downtown recognition

6:12 AM, Oct. 29, 2011 | 13 Comments

Written by
Courtney Jordan

Burlington was recently named one of the nation's best downtowns by Forbes Magazine, making it the city's seventh accolade of 2011.

Recognized for its "lively" and "charming" nature, Church Street was also noted in Livability.com's Top 10 downtowns earlier this month, which helped influence Forbes' list.

Forbes cited Church Street's variety of culture and commerce and the array of street performers as being a large part of the ranking.

Executive Director of Church Street Marketplace Ron Redmond says that it's the people of the city who contribute to its frequent recognition.

"It's the nature of Vermonters to get along with each other," Redmond said. "There is a civility that I haven't experienced in other communities."

America's Best Downtowns were selected based on a variety of criteria including attractiveness, accessibility and diversity of cultural options and offerings, something that Redmond says are abundant in Burlington.

"People here are really engaged," he said. "The number of events and activities downtown is almost exhausting. If you were to compare to other, even larger, cities, the number of events would pale in comparison to Burlington each year."

Burlington makes no efforts at marketing itself for these types of awards, but the magnitude of activity within the city undoubtedly attracts people from all over, Redmond said.

"We don't have a dedicated effort toward winning awards, we're too busy," he said.

Redmond says that Burlington's culture of continuous activity is due to the nature of the people who live here.

"You've got to be a certain kind of person to live here," he said. "People here are committed to being their best selves and establishing a quality of life that serves that."

Burlington's downtown was also commended for its bike and walk-friendly streets as well as being home to one of the country's "best microbreweries," The Magic Hat Brewing Co. The smallest on the list in terms of population at 42,417, Burlington's acclaim was among cities from Chicago, Ill., to Santa Monica, Calif.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20111029/NEWS01/110290309/Burlington-earns-downtown-recognition?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Dancing House - One of My Favorite Buildings

2011-10-29T19:47:00.003-05:00

Thanks to my friend Kathy Fors who sent this photo from Prague.

Dancing House (Tančící dům) occupies a fine position by the Vltava River. This stunning building, constructed between 1992-1996, is somewhat of a rarity in Prague; a modern, glass building surrounded by historic architecture.

Dancing House has daring, curvy outlines, which led its architects, Vlado Milunc and the American Frank O Gehry, to initially name it the "Astaire & Rogers Building", after the legendary dance duo.

The top floor of Dancing House is home to one of the city's leading restaurants,Celeste Restaurant. Diners can enjoy delightful cuisine and magnificent views over the river and up to Prague Castle.

Latest Asian Mistranslations

2011-10-18T06:13:00.002-05:00

It may be one of the world's great websites. Visit often, http://www.engrish.com/.

Temporal Conspiracy - 300 Missing Years

2011-10-16T06:48:00.002-05:00

The Palatine Chapel, Aachen, which according to the PTH displays architectural features without historical precedent.
Tobias Helfrich/cc Attribution Share-Alike 3.0

Phantom Time
Were the Middle Ages just a historical conspiracy theory?

By Jerry Glover

You know what they say about the early Middle Ages, don’t you? If you can remember them, you weren’t really there. However, if you could recall those times, was this simply because you had been making up the entire era as a state-enrolled forger? If so, this would be explicable by the Phantom Time Hypothesis (PTH), a chronological theory almost unheard of in its radicalism, and which has been propagating steadily through German academic circles since 1998.

Picture a mediæval-style ‘Manhattan Project’ with scriptoria instead of hangars, and Gothic minuscule instead of maths. Holy Roman Emperor Otto III (980–1002) has engaged his theologians under the leadership of Gerbert d’Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) in a project that is among the most zealous and secretive of its kind since the facsimile houses of Alexandria were at their busiest. The gilding of narratives has many precedents in the writing of histories, especially self-aggrandising ones. But the one described by the PTH takes this art of embellishment up a few more notches: more than two centuries worked up from scratch, then infiltrated into as many chronologies as possible. Only a Middle Gothic or a Byzantine fanatic could have taken it to such lengths. But it worked. And as the traces were destroyed, the histories reconfigured and rebound, no one was any the wiser. At least until Heribert Illig and his adherents apparently figured it out.

Illig’s theory is rooted in the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. It had long been known that the old Julian calendar had a defect – the Julian year being roughly 11 minutes too long – and the new calendar was designed to correct this discrepancy, to the tune of making up for 10 days that gradually slipped during the years between AD 1 and AD 1582. But Illig alleged that the Julian calendar should have produced a discrepancy of not 10 but 13 days over the period in question, and concluded that roughly three centuries had been added to the calendar that had never existed. His response was to run with the notion of calendar “slack” and look for corroborative evidence.

The obvious period to look at was the most obscure one: the Dark Ages. Byzantinists and architectural historians are largely responsible for giving us the period from c. 600–900, about which almost nothing is known in cultural or urban development. The historical sources simply aren’t in the ground or the archives. This raises the ‘debate of continuity’, explained by groups of ‘Gradualists’ who bicker learnedly over whether the period happened so slowly that the participants hardly noticed it, or that it was a kind of torpid aftermath from Antiquity’s brilliance. The glaring exception here is the Carolingians, and the luminous figure of Charlemagne who is meant to have reigned from 768 to 814. Illig zeroes in on the polymath qualities of Charlemagne as recorded in various texts which make him an architect, astronomer, educator, philologist, folklorist, lawmaker and more. For Illig, “the conclusion is simple: far too much is ascribed to this one person.”[1]

Speaking of these texts, Illig stresses that “[T]he number of genuine documents diminishes all the time. In fact, it’s moving towards zero.” The physical sources of this period are best embodied by the Aachen Palatine Chapel; yet its anomalies, which include a dome without a precedent (or a Carolingian successor) and the lack of a building tradition in the 400-year gap between the Romans and the Franks,[2] makes Illig certain that: “Carolingian buildings do not fit into the history of the arts as it is taught today.” Taking the Palatine Chapel out of the Carolingian Renaissance removes the ‘ecclesiastical heart’ from the Frankish Empire. “With the loss of this dome alone,” says Illig, “the tradition of Charlemagne’s giant empire crumbles to dust.”[3]

Others who’ve taken up the Phantom Time Hypothesis find evidence from further east. Uwe Topper and Manfred Zeller use the PTH to resolve such problems as why the architecture of the Umayyads has untypical characteristics;[4] why Arab coins under the caliph Abd al Malik bear the portrait of a dead King; and why the famous historical epic, the Shahnameh, wraps up in the mid 7th century AD, with a gap of 300 years to its time of writing in AD 1010, and has no allusions to Islam. From this they discern a phantom time period of 78 years that came into being “through artificial separation of the Persian and Umayyad history which in reality was contemporaneous”.[5] This puts the origin of Islam in a bit of an awkward spot, but may at least remove some of the mystery from its near-miraculous success. The history of the dynasty of Harun al-Rashid, greatest of the Abassid caliphs, with all the expeditions he led and the diplomatic gifts he gave to Charlemagne (including a clock that dropped bronze balls into a bowl, and two albino elephants) were dreamt up at a scribe’s desk.

Phantom Time is also borne out by Jewish history, which “totally disappeared together with the breakdown of the Roman Empire”, not resurfacing in evidence until the Carolingian period.[6] The difficulty Dr Hans-Ulrich Niemitz sees with archæological sources, for which he cites the absence of German town stratigraphies from the relevant era and the achingly slow development of north German ceramics from the 7th–9th centuries AD, is that it is not dated independently of written sources. This contravenes proper archæological method. Specialists referring to neighbouring disciplines to solve their problems, Neimitz argues, fall into circular reasoning, discounting the whole situation and thus missing the bigger picture.

Also discussed by Niemitz is dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating. The field has only recently bridged all the gaps in European history over two millennia; but, says Niemitz, this achievement relies on far too few samples to date the Middle Ages. More pointedly still, in Niemitz’s view, Ernst Hollstein, Germany’s leading dendrochronologist, fatally changed the methodology by allowing the sequence samples to admit red beech (alongside oak) to bridge the critical 8th century with a sequencepredated by historians. An archæological no-no, you’ll recall. Hollstein despaired that: “It is strange, but it has proved extremely difficult to connect the Merovingian wood samples from excavations with the above mentioned chronologies,” and that “all attempts to get enough tree ring sequences from timber of the Carolingian times have failed…”[7]

Illig offers hypotheses and suspects for this grandest of deceptions. The first is that Otto III had his teacher, Gerbert d’Aurillac, the best-read man in Christendom, direct the production and insertion of 300 extra years because he wanted to be ‘Christian Man of the Millennium’ in the year AD 1000 (in the event, two years before Otto’s death). Or did Constantine VII (AD 905–959) rewrite Byzantine history by having the monks convert every single piece of Greek majuscule into the new minuscule script, before destroying the originals, changing all existing texts in two generations, or even faster?

Niemitz’s two key questions are: when, how, and why was history falsified by 300 years, and how come scientists seemingly didn’t notice sooner?[8] “The second question,” says Niemitz, “implicitly triggers the threat of a changing of the paradigms, which implies a threat to confidence in the work of all scientists working in historical research.” This could be a sleight-of-hand argument, when a more pointed question might be: what’s the point of going to all the trouble? What’s to be gained? If the Otto III scenario is to carry any weight, the question of motive cannot be brushed under the carpet, as Niemitz wants it to be. The Emperor must have been very concerned indeed about his image in history, since his bogus chronology could only have been written with posterity in mind. Why? Because the great majority of those who would have been able to consume it at the time Otto III was alive were already involved in faking it. Practically everyone who mattered within the Emperor’s dominion would have been complicit, negating its intended effect.

Perhaps this is beside the point. As exponents of the PTH are mindful, it is an idea that challeges what is considered to be immutable, exposing weak points and championing the need for more interdisciplinary study. There is also a call for research to be done outside the usual group, since, as philosopher of scientific breakthroughs Thomas Kuhn has explained,[9] only a few scientists are willing to reopen research into a problem that the group considers to have been solved (sometimes on the word of a single expert). I suspect economists know well how true this is – as do forteans. Enough uncertainty exists over inconsistent Dark Ages knowledge, and how the evidence has been interpreted and assembled, to make such a project perfectly conceivable; and, in my view, more research across disciplines is a prime pathway towards gaining a better sense of how and why History comes into existence.

Notes
1 Heribert Illig: “The Invented Middle Ages” (essay); seebearfabrique.org.
2 The lack of physical traces of Viking raids in the Frankish Empire, for example.
3 Illig: op. cit.
4 The first Arabic dynasty, AD661–750.
5 Dr Hans-Ulrich Niemitz: Did the Early Middles Ages Really Exist?, rev. vers., 2000.
6 Cecil Roth: The Dark Ages: Jews in Christian Europe 711–1096, 1966, p162.
7 E Hollstein: “Dendrochronologische Untersuchungen an Holzern des fruthen Mittelalters”, In Acta Præhistorica 1, 1970, pp147–156.
8 Sir Isaac Newton was dissatisfied with the Classical Mediterranean chronology, changing the dating of the Trojan War and Rome’s Founding.
9 Thomas S Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1970.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us - Good Luck LDU

2011-10-13T18:56:00.003-05:00

I can't help myself. Best of luck to the LDU debaters headed off to Hart House.

Occupy Wall Street vs. Tea Party, and the Winner is...

2011-10-13T18:40:00.002-05:00

Image by JuntosWorldwide via FlickrCHART: Americans Support Occupy Wall Street, Oppose Tea Party

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Oct 13, 2011 at 11:45 am

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans support the Occupy Wall Street protests by a two-to-one margin (37 percent in favor, 18 percent opposed) while more Americans view the Tea Party negatively (28 percent in favor, 41 percent opposed). This means the Occupy Wall Street protests have a net favorability of +19 percent while the Tea Party has a net favorability of -13 percent, as this chart produced by ThinkProgress shows:

A new Time Magazine poll found an even more positive results for Occupy Wall Street, showing 54 percent held a favorable view of the movement, compared to just 27 percent with a favorable view of the Tea Party. In the Time poll, just 23 percent had an unfavorable view of Occupy Wall street, for a net rating of +31 percent. Meanwhile, 33 percent had an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, giving it a a net rating of -6 percent.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/13/343028/chart-americans-support-occupy-wall-street-oppose-tea-party/

Colors of Colorado October 2011

2011-10-05T21:23:00.001-05:00

I took two debaters to the US Air Force Academy Debate Tournament in Colorado Springs, and while we were there (and won the tournament) we had some time to visit Pike's Peak, the Garden of the Gods and Red Rocks before we flew back to Vermont.

Thanks to Jessica Bullock and Paul Gross for a great weekend and for sharing these nice stones.

My Grandson Jackson Rides a Ferris Wheel

2011-09-26T06:56:00.002-05:00

Ah, the joy of childhood!

Earth From Above - Time To Change our Perspective

2011-09-23T06:27:00.000-05:00

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Southern aurora as seen from above. Incredible view!

And this one of flying over Earth in time lapse.

We gotta get off this rock at some point, if for no other reason it will change our perspective on our planet and ourselves for the better.

Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan

2011-09-14T07:16:00.002-05:00

THE GATES OF HELL

Fiery crater that has been burning for 38 years

Source www.flickr.com

In the hot, expansive Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, near the 350 person village of Derweze, is a hole 328 feet wide that has been on fire. For 38 years it has constantly been active. This hole is known as the Darvaza Gas Crater or the "Gates of Hells" by locals, the crater can be seen glowing for miles around.

The hole is the outcome not of nature but of an industrial accident. In 1971 a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole at an alarming rate. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight. The crater hasn't stopped burning since.

Though little information is available about the fate of the Soviet drilling rig, presumably it is still down there somewhere, on the other side of the "Gates of Hell."

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-gates-of-hell

Vermont Flooding in Video 2011

2011-09-02T06:51:00.000-05:00

Nice video by Eva Sollberger from her series, Stuck in Vermont. Good photos and comments. It makes it clear that some areas (like Burlington) were untouched, while others had a lot of riverside damage.

I hope this helps some of my many friends who have been curious about the flooding.

Vermont will survive and thrive!

Elisabeth Sladen Autobiography To Be Published

2011-08-19T05:20:00.001-05:00

Dave Golder at 08:47am August 19 2011

She finished the draft before her shocking, untimely death, and the book has now been readied for release in November with her family’s blessing

Prior to her death in April this year, Elisabeth Sladen, known and loved by millions for over three and a half decades as Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, had been working on a memoir. An account of her career on stage and screen and an insider’s view of the world’s longest-running science fiction series, the book had been completed in draft form but illness prevented Elisabeth from finishing it.

With the support of her husband, Brian Miller, and daughter, Sadie, Aurum will now publish Elisabeth’s memoir in November this year. The book traces Elisabeth’s story from humble beginnings in post-war Liverpool, through a joyful career in the theatre, to unexpected fame alongside Doctors Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. In the process it explores the far from glamorous realities of filming in TV’s golden age, the strange and wonderful world of Doctor Who fandom, and what it was like to return to the show over 30 years after Sarah Jane first set foot in the TARDIS.

Elisabeth’s editor at Aurum, Sam Harrison said: “I remember my first meeting with Elisabeth – the hilarious and eye-opening stories she had to tell and my feeling of elation that she wanted to turn them into a book. Having grown up watching her as Sarah Jane Smith it was a personal dream come true. She was a fantastic person to work with – fun but utterly professional – and it’s incredibly sad that she’s no longer with us. I’m glad she had a chance to share some of her memories in this book. I hope it will make a fitting tribute to a great actress and a wonderful woman.’

Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography will be published on Monday 7^th November

http://www.sfx.co.uk/2011/08/19/elisabeth-sladen-autobiography-to-be-published/

Book Review: The Children of Odin, Padraic Colum

2011-07-18T05:36:00.001-05:00

THE CHILDREN OF ODIN: The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum

This was an interesting read for me, because while I amroughly familiar with these mythic stories I am not familiar with the detailsand the way they are told in their fairly faithful retelling in English.

The stories were striking for a few of the similarities:

1. The weaknesses of the righteous and noble oftencome back to haunt them. The fall of the Norse gods happened because several ofthem made one bad choice, acted once out of weakness and thus sewed the seedsfor their fall.

2. Cleverness is a problem. Loki and others try tobe clever to get what they want, and it always turns out bad.

3. Very little in terms of the ethic of cooperationbeyond your immediate group. They simply stick with their own and do not try towork things out with others. When Loki is driven out and begins hanging outwith (and having children with others) it is a very bad thing. Fighting seemsbetter than talking.

4. Entities become convinced by deeds and actions,not by words.

I say these things because they held me to understand alittle bit better my experience in Scandinavian countries with trying topromote debate. If you are openly trying to convince people you must be evil.Likewise, if you are clever that is also deeply suspect.

It was interesting, but fairly grim. Not my favoritemythology because the lessons seem so uniform.

List of My Online Video Lectures

2011-07-14T03:22:00.001-05:00

I was updating my vita and decided I would list the main lectures that I have online as videos. There turned out to be more than I expected. There are a lot more somewhere, but here are 66 I found fairly quickly.

ONLINE VIDEO LECTURES

Online videos of lecturespresented around the world and at the University of Vermont.

Since February 2009 myvideos on vimeo.com have been viewed 148,592 times as of 12 July 2011. Myvideos have been embedded in web pages viewed by 2.3 million users. http://vimeo.com/stats/totals#/fields:total_plays,total_loads,total_finishes,likes,comments/sort:date/start_date:2009-02-02/end_date:2011-07-13

This list does not include420+ episodes of Flashpoint television, found at http://flashpointtv.blogspot.com/

2011

“What persuasion researchtells us about debating,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2011. http://vimeo.com/26177258

“Points of information inthe WSDC format,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2011. http://vimeo.com/26130010

“Debating issues in ecology,”World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2011. http://vimeo.com/26104567

“Introduction toargumentation for debaters,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2011.http://vimeo.com/26082166

“Reggae, women, Rastafariand social change,” for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont,Spring 2011. http://vimeo.com/22088164

“The rhetoric of PeterTosh,” for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont, Spring 2011. http://vimeo.com/21733745

“The rhetoric of BobMarley,” for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont, Spring2011. http://vimeo.com/21467208

“Western rhetorical theoryand Reggae music,” for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont,Spring 2011. http://vimeo.com/20612796

“Reggae and Rastafarianism,”for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont, Spring 2011. Partone: http://vimeo.com/20059986; Part two: http://vimeo.com/20335327

“Origins of Reggae,” forclass Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont, Spring 2011. http://vimeo.com/19787339

“African rhetorical theoryand Reggae music,” for class Rhetoric of Reggae Music, University of Vermont,Spring 2011. http://vimeo.com/19506181

2010

“Persuasion and deception,” for class Persuasion andInfluence, University of Vermont, Fall 2010. http://vimeo.com/25621726

Video interview with AprilSimpson,” for Christian Science Monitor article, December 2010. http://vimeo.com/18006904

“Debate persuasion by thestudies,” International Debate Academy, Slovenia, November 2010. http://vimeo.com/17646344

“Understanding ecological philosophies,”International Debate Academy, Slovenia, November 2010. http://vimeo.com/17644981

“Recruiting and retainingdebaters,” Teacher Workshop, International Debate Academy, Slovenia, November2010. http://vimeo.com/17454809

“Building thickerarguments,” International Debate Academy, Slovenia, November 2010. http://vimeo.com/17454380

“Debate – critical methodfor the 21^st century,” keynote speech, Conference on Argument andDebate, University of Padua, Italy, November 2010. http://vimeo.com/17037902

“Use of power pairing atWorld Schools Debating Championships,” 3^rd Thinking and Speaking aBetter World Conference, Maribor, Slovenia, October 2010. http://vimeo.com/16315996

“Debate academy model ofdebater education and training,” with Bojana Skrt, 3^rd Thinking andSpeaking a Better World conference, Maribor, Slovenia, October 2010. http://vimeo.com/16242563

“Eight sequential persuasionstrategies,” for class Persuasion and Influence, University of Vermont, October2010. http://vimeo.com/16007394

“Don’t debate like an uglyAmericans,” with Bojana Skrt, East Debate Institute, University of Vermont,August 2010. http://vimeo.com/14461075

“Introduction to debating,”Serbia Debate Academy, Kopaonik, Serbia, July 2010. http://vimeo.com/14206222

“Debate training exerciselist,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2010. Part one: http://vimeo.com/13450158; Part two: http://vimeo.com/13450759

“Note taking in the WSDCformat,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2010. http://vimeo.com/13410644

“Avoiding and identifyingargument fallacies,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2010. http://vimeo.com/13396044

“Debating against economicdevelopment,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2010. http://vimeo.com/13297268

“Training debaters inargumentation, Teacher Workshop, World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July2010. http://vimeo.com/13279334

“Applying African rhetoricaltheories to African American rhetoric,” for class African American Rhetoric,University of Vermont, Spring 2010. http://vimeo.com/9349117

“What is debate all about?”Kyushu University, Japan, January 2010. http://vimeo.com/9095203

“Common issues in debating,”Kyushu University, Japan, January 2010. http://vimeo.com/9059128

2009

“The art of rebuttal,” WorldUniversities Debating Championship, Antalya, Turkey, December 2009. http://vimeo.com/8420020

“Debating internationalrelations,” International Debate Academy, Slovenia, November 2009. http://vimeo.com/7952681

“How to host a debatetournament,” Qatar Debate Academy, Doha, Qatar, October 2009. Part one: http://vimeo.com/7419891; Part two: http://vimeo.com/7435227

“Chaim Perelman and theuniversal audience,” for class Argument and Decision, University of Vermont,Fall 2009. http://vimeo.com/7265293

“Henry Johnstone and adhominem arguments,” for class Argument and Decision, University of Vermont,Fall 2009. http://vimeo.com/7247519

“History of presidentialcampaigns in the USA,” for class Presidential Campaign Rhetoric, University ofVermont, Spring 2009. http://vimeo.com/25642370

“Using your fifteen minutes of preparation time wisely,” EastDebate Institute, University of Vermont, August 2009. http://vimeo.com/7247519

“How debaters can keep upwith the news,” East Debate Institute, University of Vermont, August 2009. http://vimeo.com/6239375

“Researching for preparedmotions ion the WSDC format,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont,July 2009. http://vimeo.com/6070975

“Public speaking in the WSDCformat,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/6070975

“Argumentation in the WSDCformat,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/6040846

“Distance debate: using newmedia for debate,” keynote speaker, National Federation of High Schools AnnualMeeting, Buffalo, New York, August 2009. http://vimeo.com/6026862

“Making your arguments moreimportant,” Serbia Debate Academy, Divcibare, Serbia, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/5955824

“Understanding ecologicalphilosophies,” Serbia Debate Academy, Divcibare, Serbia, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/5937224

“How debaters can trainthemselves,” with Bojana Skrt, Serbia Debate Academy, Divcibare, Serbia, July2009. http://vimeo.com/5889036

“Understanding and usinginternational relations theories in debates,” Serbia Debate Academy, Divcibare,Serbia, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/5818180

“Opposition strategies inthe WSDC format,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/5800528

“Points of information inthe WSDC format,” World Schools Debate Academy, Slovenia, July 2009. http://vimeo.com/5770280

“Motion interpretation inthe WSDC format,” Slovenia Debate Summer School, Slovenia, June 2009. Part one:http://vimeo.com/5751333; Part two: http://vimeo.com/5753071

2008

“Understanding theElaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion,” for class Persuasion andInfluence, University of Vermont, Fall, 2008. http://vimeo.com/25641510

“Tips for effectiverefutation,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2008. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi08refutetipstuna.m4v

“Types of arguments and howto use them,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2008. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi08typesargstunax.m4v

“Debating about nuclearenergy,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2008. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi08nucenergytuna1.m4v

2007

“My debate story,” WorldDebate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2007. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi07mystory.m4v

2006

“Persuasion theory anddebating,” World Debate Institute Asia, Seoul, Korea, 2006. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdia06perslecture.m4v

“Debate in across thecurriculum: the next phase,” keynote, 1^st Thinking and Speaking aBetter World Conference, Koper, Slovenia, November 2006. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/koper06snider.m4v

2003

“Dynamic public speaking,”World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, Summer 2003. http://vimeo.com/25625522

“Making an argument,” globalwebcast sponsored by World Debate Institute, February 2003. http://real.uvm.edu:554/ramgen/debate/makinganarg.rm

2001

“Opposing the use of irony in debates,” World DebateInstitute, University of Vermont, July 2001. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi01irony.m4v

“Persuasion in internationaldebating,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2001. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi01intlperstuna.rm

“Causation arguments ininternational debating,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July2001. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi01intlcaustuna.rm

“Dynamic speaking in highschool debating,” World Debate Institute, University of Vermont, July 2001. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/wdi01dynspking.rm

“Should debate be a subjectin all schools,” a debate staged by International Debate Education Association,Prague, Czech Republic, 2001. Iwas opposition, arguing against debate in schools. http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/debatedebate.m4v

2000

“Training drills and exercises,” World Debate Institute,University of Vermont, July 2000. http://real.uvm.edu:554/ramgen/debate/parli03l.rm

“Critical Advocacy:Introduction to Debates and Debating,” video series in cooperation with EnglishSpeaking Union (UK), Claremont Colleges, University of South Carolina andUniversity of Vermont, 2000. I appear on ten of thirteen parts. http://debate.uvm.edu/critadv.html

1999

“Introduction to PolicyDebating,” thirteen part series produced for Open Society Institute, New YorkCity, 1999. http://debate.uvm.edu/policyvideo.html

Robert Tilton - A Legendary Televangelist - 1989 Video Collage

2011-06-29T04:27:00.001-05:00

This is a video study I did of Robert Tilton in 1989, and many of these sounds appeared on various industrial music tracks in the years to come. This would be a lot of fun if it wasn't quite so tragic. This was part of work I did for my course, "Rhetoric of Television Evangelism."

You simply cannot believe some of the things he says. On top of that, people then sent him tens of millions of dollars.

It is true, however, that I have a number of rhetorical devices I got from Bob Tilton. I will not disclose what they are, but they are catchy and fun, unlike most of what Tilton says.

The articles below chart the continued activity of this sort.

Debating Space - 27 Years Later

2011-06-24T19:12:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I can't tell whether we sound prophetic or just old. My points of stasis still adhere. That Soviet Union stuff seems a bit dated.

The upcoming national high school policy debate topic for 2011-12 in the USA will be about USA federal government space policies. I have enjoyed coaching and teaching using space development examples. In 1984 I wrote an article about debating space that was published by NASA. It is fairly early in the "debate across the curriculum" train of thought I have been pursuing since then. That article has been found and republished.

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/debate.html

Alfred Snider, "Space Utilization as a Subject of Academic Debates," in N.A.S.A. volume, Social Sciences and Space Exploration, November 1984.

Alfred Snider, "Guidelines for Using Debate as an In-Class Tool," In N.A.S.A. Volume, Social Sciences and Space Exploration, November 1984.

Also included here:

The Use of Space Research in Intercollegiate Debate
Melissa Maxcy Wade and James M. Wade Director of Forensics and Assistant Debate Coach Emory University, In N.A.S.A. Volume, Social Sciences and Space Exploration, November 1984.

Gil Scott-Heron 1948-2011

2011-05-28T04:53:00.003-05:00

He and I grew up together. Not literally, but figuratively. In a media saturated world there are those who can be important to you that you have never met. Thus, Gil Scott-Heron.

From the first time I heard "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" I knew that this was an extraordinary person who had some very important things to say.

"The Bottle" eventually made me think about my own use of alcohol. "Mandate My Ass" was something that I could really identify with after Ronald Reagan was re-elected.

He was up and down, eventually admitted that he was HIV positive, and after such an incredible career was still to be found living on the couches of friends because of his often down and out status. He struggled with the ideas he expressed, in a very visceral way, and did not just celebrate them.

Today, with his loss, it really is winter in America.

HOME IS WHERE THE HATRED IS

A junkie walking through the twilight
I'm on my way home
I left three days ago, but noone seems to know i'm gone
Home is where the hatred is
Home is filled with pain and it,
might not be such a bad idea if i never, never went home again

stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why
hang on to your rosary beads
close your eyes to watch me die
you keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it
God, but did you ever try
to turn your sick soul inside out
so that the world, so that the world
can watch you die

home is where i live inside my white powder dreams
home was once an empty vacuum that's filled now with my silent screams
home is where the needle marks
try to heal my broken heart
and it might not be such a bad idea if i never, if i never went home again
home again
home again
home again
kick it, quit it
kick it, quit it
kick it, quit it
kick it, can't go home again

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

New Asia Republic: My Opinion Piece 20 May 2011

2011-05-24T06:55:00.000-05:00

If the people do not lead, democracy is a ruse

– MAY 20, 2011POSTED IN: POLITICS, SOCIETY, SPECIAL PROJECTS

Alfred C. Snider

Dr. Alfred Snider is a professor at the University of Vermont. He has published six books in the last ten years and has done communication and debate training in over 35 countries around the world, recently in places like Finland and Iraq.

Egyptians emerged triumphant when Hosni Mubarak stepped down as President.

There seems to be a broad consensus that democracy, in its many forms, is the form of government that progressive states should have. Whether it is parliamentary, federal, regional or other types, many agree that it is best to let the people decide through free and open elections and that this will lead, hopefully, to good governance. I largely agree with this, but to me a crucial and often overlooked variable is the role that individual citizens take in their participation in various forms of democracy.

The theory is that if the people are the final arbiters of the distribution of power and if their will is respected by elected representatives, then governance and the policies adopted will be better, even if not perfect. When leaders and elected representatives have to answer to the people they will do a better job. Along with this, and crucially, the people will be able to articulate the best direction for the state based on their own goals and needs.

The assumption here is that citizens are playing their appropriate roles. They need to be informed about current events, government policies, the outcomes of these policies and the plans for the future. This assumes that they actively seek information, evaluate it critically and then speak out as well as vote in support of what they favor. After all, freedom of speech is useless if no one has anything to say, and the right to vote is not valuable unless you are voting for something you know about and believe in.

I believe that in many societies these basic standards are not being met. There are several reasons for this.

First, people are very busy with their everyday lives and their economic struggles. It takes time and effort to follow events, understand and evaluate them. It takes time to find out what candidates and parties are actually proposing (for the devil is often in the details) and how well they follow through on their supposed agendas. Too often citizens who are tired merely want to have a beverage and watch a sporting event instead, and those who do follow the “news” are often convinced that the latest movie or celebrity event are more important than they really are. They assume that they can learn enough from news stories that are too short to be substantive and often delivered by media outlets with a decidedly fixed perspective. The Internet may provide the ability for citizens to learn about “all sides” but it still takes time, and in any even remotely prosperous society time is the commodity most in demand. It simply does not get invested in citizen participation of the type I have identified.

Second, there is a sense in which a global, interconnected and multicultural world is complex and daunting to understand. This makes it even more difficult for citizens to comprehend realities and express their preferences. The media offers a dominating panoply of pundits who are “experts,” yet still totally disagree, leaving non-expert citizens to throw up their hands and express profound cynicism. Political figures play on this, offering slogan-oriented campaigns and promises without proposals to a political public that does not want to spend the time and effort to cut through to the real situation. When promises are not delivered, the response is to often cynicism with the political system in general. Thus, low involvement creates a shallow politics that generates increasing cynicism and apathy.

Third, our educational systems train future citizens to be passive consumers of information. They are put in situations where they listen to their teachers, who supposedly know what they need to know, and then are asked to spit mostly facts back on standardized tests. Creativity and individuality can be punished, and the active mental habits that they will need as citizens (discerning good evidence from bad, critiquing arguments made to them and learning to become advocates for their own viewpoints) are sadly neglected. Very little in our modern educational systems train young people to be strong advocates for their positions.

Fourth, occasional activism in a crisis is not sufficient. Very difficult situations may lead to mass protest and voter anger, and we have seen governments toppled by citizens who are unsatisfied with their rulers. One would hope that a new and informed citizenry will help guide these societies into meaningful democratic futures, but without the everyday habits of mind to engage in this process, such occasional protests may lead to some changes but perhaps not a true change in the way citizens interact with the political system. The ebullience of the “Arab Spring” may not lead to a new active citizen politics in the Arab world. Even if you vote, that does not mean you know what you are voting for. Some say “your vote is your voice,” but that is hardly true when you use your supposed vote/voice only every few years. An active citizenry must remain active for the body politic to remain healthy.

If we are frustrated with the politics we have in many developed countries, it could be because we have got the governments that we deserve. In the absence of true participation by citizens, interest groups and other blocs are likely to take their place by doing the lobbying and in many countries financing the campaigns. These groups will be beholden to their particular interests, not to the interests of the nation in general.

It is possible to reclaim your role as an active citizen at any time. Follow events, make your own decisions and then get involved at an appropriate level. Use your voice and your informed opinion each and every day. The Internet allows access to many different points of view and sources of information, survey them and come to your own conclusion.

It would be still better to train the next generation of citizens to take on this role as a mater of habit. Increasingly, we see this happening in many parts of the world. The increase in global academic debating activities and trainings is one sign of this. Whether at universities in Malaysia, middle schools in Los Angeles, or in debate clubs in Macedonia, millions of students on every continent are finding their voices and learning how to use them. Next weekend there will be the first international university debating championship in Arabic held in Qatar, hosted by QatarDebate. Africa now has a Pan African Universities Debating Championship. Ministries of education are increasingly aware of these needs and are moving towards more active modes of learning, such as small group problem solving, group discussion, mock trials and other learning practices that are educationally productive, highly engaging to the students as well as wonderful training for a future as active citizens. My own work is closely associated with all of these efforts.

In an age when the full promise of democracy has not been fulfilled, there is hope that a more active citizenry, encouraged by the needs of common people and enabled by improved educational techniques, can help improve the situation. I remain optimistic.

–

Photo courtesy of RIAN.RU.

This article is part of the New Asia Republic Editorial Series “Global Perspectives on Good Governance” under Special Projects. The series features the views of people who hold political office, those working in NGOs, military brass, academics and the man on the street from all over the world to shed light on what constitutes good governance and interpretations of the idea based on the unique socio-political and historical culture of any given country/state.

http://newasiarepublic.com/?p=27879

Book Review: Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

2011-05-19T15:33:00.002-05:00

CLEOPATRA: A Life by Stacy Schiff

It is obvious that too many accounts of this famous woman have been flights of fantasy down through the ages. This book attempts to tell a real and fact based account of the events of this amazing life, contrasting that with the propaganda war of misinformation against her led by Octavian and by the selective reading and invention by writers ever since then.

I have to confess that I have recently read excellent biographies of Cicero, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar. That actually makes this book even better because I get to compare the roles portrayed by the other supposed historical accounts with this one. Schiff’s work stands up very well among them, but also goes the extra step.

The extra step is to discuss in a direct way the problems Cleopatra faced as a woman. My impression is that had she been a man Rome might have ended up as a colony of the New Alexandrian Empire. I say that because of Cleopatra’s remarkable organizational and intellectual abilities as compared with her rivals and collaborators that made her such a success, but the patriarchy of Rome made it impossible for her to gain strong allegiances outside of her immediate region. In Egypt she had done well to become a god-like Pharaoh and the nations surrounding her look to her for guidance. Rome, however, would not. The individual Roman, such as Julius or Mark Anthony, might become fascinated by her skills, but the mass of Roman males would not. She became a useful tool of Augustus to characterize events and direct attention at an external force, one that threatened with a dangerous combination: skilled women of power, mystic knowledge and rituals and a clearly very potent sexuality. Some Romans who used wives like disposable steeds were totally enchanted by her. Mostly the strongest of will among them were attracted, except for Octavian.

Was she sexually powerful? Well, apparently, yes. But that was only a small part of it. She spoke many languages, consorted in the greatest library in the ancient world, she supervised huge construction and farming operations, was the richest woman in the world and was said to be remarkably persuasive. Her persuasiveness might have been a reason why Octavian did not want to meet with her. Powerful and amazing people can often be very sexually powerful as well.

There are some very interesting comments about how wrong many of the historical and semi-historical accounts have been. In many instances they say things that are completely opposite of one another. Schiff does a good job of sorting this out as she goes through the story.

For a history buff like me, this is an excellent book. It is also the first book I read on my new Kindle ereader, which I absolutely love. The pages just seem to zoom!

Holiday in Slovenia 2011

2011-05-19T05:26:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia
For years May and early June have been a time for me to vacation at my home in Baja California, Mexico that I occupied as a boy an that I have inherited from my father some years ago. Many of you know about this place and have visited it virtually through my website at http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/mex/ . For a slideshow I put together, check out http://vimeo.com/12461985 .

This year I am not in Mexico. I am in Slovenia. Is Slovenia a better vacation spot than Mexico? Not really. I am not putting down Slovenia, because I really like it, enjoy visiting and very much enjoyed my sabbatical semester I spent here a few years ago. It is just that there is something special about the isolation there, the raw encounter with the natural world and spicy Mexican food. I have often written about it in my "Baja Mystic" series.

I am here because Bojana has some medical issues. She is here to get screened, diagnosed and then treated for what seems to be some sort of eye disorder. So, I am here now, at least until I return to the USA to my last NFL nationals as director of tournament operations after a run of ten years. Then, I will return to Slovenia to be with Bojana and also to attend a few events, such as a planning session for the next Thinking and Speaking a Better World Conference to be held in the near future, the World Schools Debate Academy and then the Former Yugoslavia Debate Conference.

So, instead of pouting (not often a behavior of mine but one of my favorite words) I am going to act like I am on vacation. This involves things I usually do on vacation in Mexico, including:

Reading
Listening to Los Angeles Dodger baseball
Taking naps whenever I feel like it
Sharing ideas from reading and contemplation, especially short book reviews

But, some things will be different:

No chance to swim 4-5 times a day as I do in Mexico
I will have strong Internet 24/7
No chance of getting sunburn on my bald spot
Visit some amazing caves nearby here in Slovenia
Avocados are harder to get and not nearly as good, so no guacamole for lunch each day

So, for now, I am on holiday in Slovenia. Whenever I say that, I remember back to a song called "Holiday in Cambodia" by the dead Kennedys. Rest assured, it will be nothing like that.

Tuna's Travel Calendar Summer

2011-05-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

This is pretty intense. Wish me luck.

May 15 Burlington, Vermont to Venice, Italy
May 16-June 7 Relax in Slovenia (instead of Mexico)
June 8 Venice, Italy to Burlington, Vermont
June 9 Burlington, Vermont to Dallas, Texas
June 10-18 Dir. of Operations, NFL Nationals, Dallas, Texas
June 19 Dallas, Texas to Burlington, Vermont
June 21-24 Regular work hours in Burlington, Vermont
June 27 Burlington, Vermont to Ljubljana, Slovenia
June 29-July 1 Better World Conference Planning Session
July 2-9 Dir. of Instruction, World Schools Debate Academy, Kranjska Gora, Slovenia
July 10-21 Relax in Slovenia
July 22 Ljubljana, Slovenia to Caracas, Venezuela
July 25-30 Campeonato Mundial (Worlds in Spanish), Caracas, Venezuela (planned)
August 1 Caracas, Venezuela to Ljubljana, Slovenia
August 2-9 Relax in Slovenia
August 10 Ljubljana, Slovenia to Burlington, Vermont
August 11-12 Relax in Burlington, Vermont
August 13 Burlington, Vermont to Seattle, Washington
August 14-19 Teach WUDC Debate, Western Washington Debate Cooperative, Bellingham, Washington
August 20 Seattle, Washington to Burlington, Vermont
August 21-26 Director, East Debate Institute, Burlington, Vermont
August 27-28 Prep for the school year
August 29 Classes begin at Vermont

My unique and strange calendar at:
http://debate.uvm.edu/tunacalendar.html

Mexico Trip Delayed Until December

2011-05-13T11:46:00.001-05:00

Bojana and I have delayed our trip to Mexico, probably until December.

She has noticed a small red patch on her left eye, and medical folks here in Vermont say it might be a lymphoma on her eye, but cannot be sure. Such things are treatable and do not tend to return. But, she needs a biopsy and a scan, which are expensive here and if she returns to Slovenia will be very inexpensive but just as rapid. So, we are in the process of buying tickets to Slovenia now. Since I have no formal duties in the USA I will go with her. She likes having someone to hold her hand. I like holding her hand.

Nobody loves Puertecitos more than Bojana, so she is not happy with this situation, but it is, I think, for the best.

Besides, December can be an interesting time in PTC, especially as compared to being in Vermont. Since I am going to Manila in late December, I will probably go from San Diego after being in Mexico.

But, I have been informed that the work on the water system of the house is now done, meaning that the toilet will flush without carrying water up from the high tide. And water will come out of the kitchen faucet. Wow!

Naked Bike Ride at University of Vermont

2011-05-07T07:08:00.000-05:00

That's the school where I teach. And I am proud of it.

I will Miss You, Elisabeth Sladen

2011-04-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

Image via WikipediaAlthough we never met, I watched you many times, especially as the brave Sarah Jane Smith. I know you would want us to carry on with courage. It hurts, but I will try.

Here are 30 minutes of snippets of you, part of what I will always remember.

The Celestial Toymaker is Gone

2011-03-18T10:12:00.000-05:00

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/03/dwn110311121050-michael-gough-celestial.html

The actor Michael Gough has died at the age of 94 or 95.

Michael Gough was best known to Doctor Who fans for his role as The Celestial Toymaker alongside the first Doctor, William Hartnell. He later appeared with fifth Doctor Peter Davison when he played the Doctor’s old friend Hedin, in the 1982 story ‘Arc of Infinity’.

Gough was born in Kuala Lumpa in either 1916 or 1915 – he never knew which. Despite the uncertainty about his year of birth, he holds the honour of being one of the longest-lived actors to have appeared in Doctor Who. His career was extraordinary. Between 1947 and 2000, he recorded at least one film per year, often more, in addition to a busy TV and stage career, which included tours with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Michael Gough’s unstoppable film career began in the forties, with ‘Androcles and the Lion’, but it was his role as Nicholai in ‘Anna Karenina’ that set in motion a prolific and distinguished movie career. By the early sixties he was well-known to TV viewers through such series as ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, ‘The Count of Monte Christo’, ‘The Saint’, ITV’s ‘Play of the Week’ and many more.

After appearing in the title role of the 1965 Doctor Who story ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, Gough started to achieve a cult status among horror film fans, appearing in several notable productions from Hammer and Amicus, while continuing to be a regular face on British TV, with roles in ‘The Avengers’, ‘Orlando’, ‘The Champions’ and ‘Theatre 625’, to name just a few. Throughout the seventies, he continued making several movies and TV series each year. Among the many classic series he appeared in during that decade are ‘Colditz’, ‘The Protectors’, ‘Crown Court’ and ‘Blake’s 7’. His career continued into the eighties with ‘Brideshead Revisited,’ ‘Smiley’s People’ and a second appearance in Doctor Who – this time with the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison.

After a further decade of TV and film appearances, Gough found new adoration among a new generation of film-goers as Batman’s butler, Alfred, in the new films in that franchise which began in 1989. His relentless work-rate continued during the 90s and into the 2000s, and he established a long friendship with director Tim Burton, appearing in ‘Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Corpse Bride’ and, in 2010, ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Gough was married four times – his third wife being Doctor Who actor Anneke Wills. Wills had encountered him at various times during her life – firstly during a theatre trip with her mother in 1952 – but they first met formally, on the set of ‘Candidate for Murder’ and the attraction was instant. Gough adopted Anneke’s daughter Polly, and in 1965, their son Jasper was born.

Wills said: "As his body was deteriorating this week, he said that he wanted to hang on for St Patrick’s Day. And he did, just. In the end... there is only love."

Michael Gough leaves his wife Henrietta, his daughter Emma and sons Simon and Jasper (Yogi).
His grandchildren Samuel and Daisy are also actors.

He was 94 or 95.

Tragic Vision - Mount Fuji in Red by Kurosawa

2011-03-12T18:14:00.000-05:00

With extreme sympathies to the people of Japan and a reinforcement for my forty year opposition to commercial nuclear electric power, I offer this video, which is one segment of my favorite movie of all time, "Dreams" by Akira Kurosawa..

1995-2003 - My Secret Life

2011-03-11T00:05:00.000-05:00

A complete history of my eight years in the TARDIS are here. I almost forgot these wonderful and magical times...

http://www.whosim.org/outpost/10thdoc.html

The Tenth Doctor (May 1995 - October, 2003)

Played by Alfred C. Snider (DRTUNA), he is the third Doctor to adventure in our sim world and the most popular. He first displayed his love of sweaters, short beards and a decidedly scholarly persona in Murder on the High Seas. Having just barely survived a regeneration crisis thanks to the mortal sacrifice of the War Witch, his existence is far more reticent and absorbed in the emotional aspect of life. His shaky beginnings progressed with companion Ben Jackson at his side. Eventually, he allowed bush pilot Tegan Jovanka to rejoin his crew along with 25th century Earth Senator Daniel Delmin. As time moved on, so did his initial crew. This Doctor has opened the TARDIS doors and gone on to share his adventures with K9 mk 4 (who nobly sacrificed his robotic life for his friends), Zoe Herriot (the 21st century Earth programmer rescued from the dimensions), Brogan MacGill (20th century journalist born to become a caretaker of the time sensitive Celestines and interdimensional Time Trap Bar), Alex Keegan (former 30th century Hegemonic guardsman and Coordinator of Mirabilis), Lane Stuart (an Earth teen abducted and enslaved by aliens), Irish (an iindependent-minded morphing cat) Jacie Hunter (Earth renegade, Dalek survivor and an accomplished Space-Time Gypsy thief ), and Eos / Fred (an energy being who saved him from oblivion by sacrificing herself and becoming human). Where his adventures take him only the Matrix knows...

Huge Snowstorm in Vermont 7 March 2011

2011-03-07T09:14:00.000-05:00

http://blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/weather/2011/03/07/snowstorm-rages-biggest-since-07/

Boss, if you’re reading this, I’m going to be late for work.
This snowstorm, still raging full force, big time as of 6 a.m., is one for the Vermont record books.
As expected, the storm is dumping tremendous amounts of snow on Vermont. Not too many reports have come in yet, as it’s early. But as of 5 a.m., the National Weather Service office in Burlington received 16.9 inches of snow so far. That would be the 17th largest snowstorm on record, but we’ll move up that chart as heavy snow continues.
As of 5 a.m., Burlington’s total snow for the winter was 115.4 inches, making this the seventh snowiest winter on record. And we’ll move up in the rankings today.
It’s windy, too, so it’s blowing around a lot. Visibilities are near zero as I look out the window typing this in St. Albans. That’s the reason I’m going to be late for work. It’s going to take quite awhile to shovel my driveway to get out.
The heavy snow will continue for most of the morning, then taper off this afternoon as the storm moves away. As you can expect, the roads are atrocious, because the plow trucks can’t keep up with the snow that’s accumulating so rapidly, and you can’t see a thing out there anyway.
I still would not be at all surprised if Burlington and other towns end up with at least 24 inches of new snow from this storm. It’s huge.
There’s still some ice jams on rivers, too, especially the Missisquoi. The jams are freezing in place now, but water still might be backed up behind the jams in spots, causing a little flooding.
When it clears up after a storm like this, it tends to get extremely cold at night. The fresh snow, especially when it’s deep, really encourages heat to radiate to space. They’re calling for temperatures in the Champlain Valley to reach to zero tonight and tomorrow night, but I wouldnt be surprised if they go to ten below, which wouldn’t put us too far from record lows.
We’ll have a couple nice days Tuesday and Wednesday, but we’re still looking at another storm Thursday which could be quite a mess. Early indications are that it could contain a fair amount of rain which could renew flooding worries.
But it’s early, and the Thursday storm could still change course and give us more snow, or even not amount to much at all, which would be good if you’re sick of storms.

Watch Planes Fly Through One Day on Planet Earth

2011-03-02T21:44:00.002-05:00

The Duke is the #1 Dodger

2011-02-28T10:34:00.002-05:00

When I was a little boy living in Los Angeles I was concerned because no famous people had our family name. I asked me father about it, and he said that I was wrong, and that the great Brooklyn Dodger center fielder Duke Snider had our name. So, I began to find out more about the Duke.

I learned that he was dependable, talented and dedicated to his team. I learned that he hit four home runs in a world series TWICE. I learned that he had a sweet swing and a pleasant personality.

Then, I heard that the Dodgers were moving to Los Angeles. My boyhood hero was coming to play in my town. He didn't play there very long because it was at the end of his career, but he helped make that bridge from Brooklyn to LA possible. Thus, I became (and still am) a diehard Dodger fan.

On Sunday Edwin Donald Snider passed away.

He told kids that they needed to learn to hate Halloween. Why? Giants' colors.

An error by a voter stopped him from being the MVP in 1955, but he was happy that Roy Campanella got it instead.

Snider probably will forever lead the franchise in home runs (389), RBIs (1,271) and extra-base hits (814), yet one of his greatest achievements was simply being in the lineup for the opening of Dodger Stadium in 1962.

Driving to the game in 1962 for the opening of Dodger Stadium his tailpipe fell off his car. When he went to pick it up he burned his hand. He kept a glove over it and did not mention it so that he would be sure to play in that game.

When his number was retired he was more impressed by all of the guests that showed up than he was with himself. He was surprised that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wanted his autograph.

His Hall of Fame speech was only nine minutes long and talked about everyone but him. "It's a little tough even getting up here," Snider said at the end of the speech. "I'd like to thank God for including me in his master plan . . . being a Brooklyn Dodger and Los Angeles Dodger."

Thanks for being a great role model. I am not doing a very good job of following in your manner and your tact, Duke, but I am trying. I need to try harder.

Thanks, Duke, for being an inspiration to me and for helping outline my personal challenge.

Final Salute to the Brigadier

2011-02-23T07:55:00.000-05:00

He uttered one of my favorite science fiction lines: "Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/23/2675808/doctor-whos-brigadier-nicholas.html

Nicholas Courtney, best known for his role as Brigadier in the UK's original "Doctor Who" series, has died at the age of 81.

Courtney actually worked with more versions of the Doctor than any other actor, having appeared in 107 episodes of the sci-fi series, several TV shorts, and reprising the role of Brigadier in "The Sarah Jane Adventures."

Born in Cairo, Egypt on Dec. 16, 1929 as William Nicholas Stone Courtney, Courtney served in the British Army before becoming an actor. Before breaking out on "Doctor Who," Courtney was in several cult hit television series.

He first appeared on "Doctor Who" in 1965 in "The Dalek's Master Plan." Ultimately, when David Langton gave up the role of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Courtney was cast in the role, which became his best-known "Doctor Who" role.

Courtney, whose most recent acting credit is 2009's "Liberty Hall" short (as Lethbridge-Stewart) was also an accomplished writer. His memoirs were "Five Rounds Rapid!," "A Soldier in Time," and "Still Getting Away With It."

This Video Caused a Conceptual Rupture in My Weekend

2011-02-18T20:23:00.002-05:00

No words can describe this video. Thanks to Ann Labrusciano for this link.

Al Jazeera English So Far

2011-02-18T17:31:00.000-05:00

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

This feels a little unusual because I am rarely complementary about modern media. However, I would like to say a few things about Al Jazeera English and their web broadcasts.

Burlington Telecom carries Al Jazeera English on its cable selection, and I am proud of them for that. However, I do not carry any cable television channels, but rather focus on the Internet for video news. I have been using BBC, CSPAN, MSNBC and a few others along with Al Jazeera English. Given the turn of events in Southwest Asia I have been watching it a bit more, often just leaving it on in the background.

Several observations follow:

The signal is good on the Internet, and it rarely skips or pauses. The technical qualities are good. I am not a big fan of the running text at the bottom, however.
They seem to have added a number of my favorite news figures, Lucian Newman who was with CNN along with Daljit Dhaliwal who has been on at least UK networks, along with others. There are many strong women on the network and I find that refreshing because I love to hear my sisters' voice.
They focus on stories that are important even if they are a bit away from the supposed "corridors of power," like the Uganda elections.
They have some decent depth to their stories, providing a lot more detail than other networks.
They have a lot of "people on the spot" reporting, which is certainly revealing when you can hear the gunshots and see people in the crowd dropping due to violence.
They seem pretty willing to deal out criticism on many regional regimes that I had thought they might be more circumspect on. Of course, I have not heard direct criticism of the Qatar government, their main sponsor.
They are fairly balanced on handling western regimes, but they pounce on contradictions and hypocrisy.
Very few advertisements are shown, and when they are they are short, snappy and usually about some Qatar megaoperation.
I have watched about 8-10 documentaries they have produced over the last few weeks and have found them to be revealing and informative.
I will certainly stick with this network while the news continues to be focused on the region they seem to cover best.

So, I have been rotating between sources when they start to repeat, as happens after a couple of hours. When not watching news I have been listening to "Low Mercury," an online radio station. In my car I have been listening to just Ska for a while now and it works well.

Low Mercury http://groovera.com/groovera-low-mercury-music-stream-homepage.php

So far, from what I have seen, I would say "well done" to Al Jazeera English.
.

Remembering Reagan

2011-02-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

First, my radio program for the day when Reagan left office.

1989-01-18 Farewell to Reagan

How could I not celebrate this day, the day when Ronald Wilson Reagan left the office of President of the United States? He had made so many ridiculous statements and presided over such a dark part of American history, that he was ideal for a musical salute.

Music included: electronic treatment of his oath of office by Bert Longsworth, Was (Not Was), Acoustic Iatrogenesis, Art Interface, Bushmaster Quayle & the Shadows, Beat the Naked, Residents, Root Boy Slim, James Brown, Bonzo goes to Washington, Test Department, Mark Stewart & the Maffia, Timezone, Art of Noise, Air Force One, Art Interface and a lot more.

Right click to download, click to listen immediately:
http://www.uvm.edu/~asnider/listen/cmk890118farewellreagan.mp3

Now, ten things we too often forget about Reagan,

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/05/reagan-centennial/

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth, and all week, conservatives have been trying to outdo each others’ remembrances of the great conservative icon. Senate Republicans spent much of Thursday singing Reagan’s praise from the Senate floor, while conservative publications have been running non-stop commemorations. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich are hoping to make a few bucks off the Gipper’s centennial.

But Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.
2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.
3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.
4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.
5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.
6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.
7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.
8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.
9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”
10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendency.

Conservatives seem to be in such denial about the less flattering aspects of Reagan; it sometimes appears as if they genuinely don’t know the truth of his legacy. Yesterday, when liberal activist Mike Stark challenged hate radio host Rush Limbaugh on why Reagan remains a conservative hero despite raising taxes so many times, Limbaugh flew into a tirade and demanded, “Where did you get this silly notion that Reagan raised taxes?“

Elderly May Not Welcome Robot Overlords

2011-02-04T20:28:00.000-05:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12347219

No, robot: Japan's elderly fail to welcome their robot overlords

By Michael Fitzpatrick BBC News, Tokyo

Pick up line: Many of Japan's elderly would prefer human helpers, rather than this nursing robot called Ri-Man

In Japan robots are friendly helpers not Terminators.

So when they join the workforce, as they do often in factories, they are sometimes welcomed on their first day with Shinto religious ceremonies.

But whether the sick and elderly will be as welcoming to robot-like tech in their homes is a question that now vexes a Japanese care industry that is struggling with a massive manpower shortage.

Automated help in the home and hospitals, believe some, could be the answer. A rapidly ageing first world is also paying close attention to Japan's dalliance with automated care.

It wants to know whether it can construct the nursing-care and medical-care needed in a future with fewer younger people to take care of the elderly. Japan could show us how.

"The country sees it as an imperative to build carer robots and systems that can monitor health in the home. Because without them the nation's health care system won't cope," says carer Yasuko Amahisa.

"There will simply be too many elderly to care for as the nation faces a dramatic declining birth rate, an ageing population, and loosening of family ties."

Above all Japan wants, if not needs, its dreams of robots in the home to come true because its immigration policy is decidedly anti-immigration, she adds.

Japan's population is ageing rapidly, with over 22% of the population aged 65 or older

Closed borders

The kind of cheap, often well-educated labour, that has filled London homes with nannies and Barcelona's with Latin American carers for the elderly, is not an option.

Japan issues only about 50,000 work visas a year, a fraction of the 700,000 immigrants needed annually to prevent its population from shrinking, hence the focus on labour-saving tech such as robots for homes.

Humanoid-style care robots were once the ideal. Japanese car makers who are behind some of the more advanced "domestic" robots even suggested a decade ago that there would be a robot in every Japanese home.

Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said he wanted robotics to be a core business for Toyota, which is now testing its robots at hospitals with what it calls "partner robots". It had hoped to crack the market by this year.

Japanese robotics manufacturers are moving away from 'humanoid' robots

"We want to create robots that are useful for people in everyday life," he said.

There are home robots but they are simply not useful enough.

"They should be able to do more. 200,000 elderly people fall and break a leg in the US each year. Robots could help here," says Joseph Engelberger, the founding force behind industrial robotics and the father of the modern robotics industry.

"Human help is expensive. Robots should cost the same as a Mercedes and could be rented out. That would be a bargain compared to paying $600 a week for help."

'Humans not machines'

Recently the Japanese government announced the outlines of a less glamorous "Home-use Robot Practical Application Project".

“Start Quote

Robotic support of the infirm and elderly has got to be aimed at improving quality of life”

Geoff Pegman MD, R.U.Robots

It has earmarked 7.6bn yen ($93m; £58m) to get these more prosaic drones and lifters into Japanese homes, to commercialise simple home-use robots and to develop safety technologies and standards, which have been major issues.

So far billions has been thrown at developing multitasking human like home robots that have very little practical applications now or in the near future.

"We think our robot will help make up for future labour shortages in an ageing society with fewer children," said Osamu Tsuchikura of Fujitsu's robotic arm, shortly before his department was closed for good.

The idea now, it seems, is to direct money and energy into more modest, more practical robot-like devices that will help care for the elderly.

"Robotic support of the infirm and elderly has got to be aimed at improving quality of life," says Geoff Pegman, managing director of one of the UK's few robot manufacturers R.U.Robots. "It should not just be for governments to save money in caring for them."

Robot guides have been removed from hospitals because they "put patients off"

The Japanese government and care industry now seems to agree after robots have turned out to be too expensive, impracticable and sometimes unwelcome, even in "robot friendly" Japan.

The country's biggest robot maker Tmsuk created a life-like one-metre tall robot six years ago, but has struggled to find interested clients.

Costing a cool $100,000 (£62,000) a piece, a rental programme was scrapped recently because of "failing to meet demands of consumers" and putting off patients at hospitals.

"We want humans caring for us, not machines," was one response.

While sales of a revolutionary spoon feeding robot arm by Secom to help elderly or disabled people eat have fizzled out owing to its $4,800 (£3,000) price.

Money, money, money

For all its research, Japan has yet to come up with a commercially successful home robot says Yukihiro Goto, a senior medical tech analyst at Macquarie Japan.

This robotic bed that converts into a wheelchair may be more realistic

"Currently such tech is at an early stage, so there is little penetration. One reason is cost. The introduction cost is still very high and the tech not mature yet," he says.

With over 22% of Japan's population already aged 65 or older, businesses are finding non-robot items such as remote-controlled beds and remote-monitoring gadgets are a better bet in a care technology market worth well over a billion dollars per year.

With an eye on this growing market, large trading firms such as Marubeni are stepping in to promote devices such as a wearable health monitor designed by a team from Tokyo University.

The HRS-I system monitors people's health by capturing data - such as electrocardiograph signals and body surface temperature - and then wirelessly transmitting that data to a mobile phone or a PC where a health professional or family member can access it remotely.

Electronic washlet toilets may be adapted as health monitors

Health-related information is collected and analysed by a small sensor attached to the body. Marubeni says it has just launched a campaign to sell 1bn yen's worth of units at a cost of around 30,000 yen mostly to companies that provide health monitoring in Japan.

"We are creating a new business here," says a Marubeni spokesman. "We expect such a business to grow exponentially as future demand for sensing, monitoring, processing and then transmitting such information takes off."

Japan's mobile phone giants are also getting involved, while the country's infamous hi-tech toilet makers are suggesting the existence of the millions of hi-tech lavatories in houses across Japan could also be adapted as health monitors.

Demand is strong they speculate, not only because of a dearth of home helpers but also because the Japanese do not subscribe on the whole to care homes for the elderly, a hangover from the days when old folks often lived with their married sons or daughters.

Your faithful friend

Now that Japan's elderly face a much more lonely dotage some are exploring the idea that technology can be harnessed to keep an eye on the old and sickly using robot pets.

One modest commercial success is Paro, the robotic pet seal - a clean, safe choice for emotional care when Fido or family is not an option.

“Start Quote

When we engage physically with a pet robot, it stimulates our affection”

Prof Takanori Shibata AIST

More than 1,000 Paros have been sold in Japan, where they are used in nursing homes and hospitals, as well as by private individuals.

The Danes too have been impressed. Following a trail in a dementia centre in Copenhagen using 12 Paro robots, the Danish Technological Institute announced that 1,000 of the electronic pets would be introduced in Danish nursing facilities by 2011.

According to its inventor Takanori Shibata from AIST, one of Japan's leading science institutes, Paro was even listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the world's most therapeutic robot".

But what makes the seal so practical is not its robotic skills but more its seemingly emphatic responses.

Electric dreams: This robot seal provides Alzheimer's patients with companionship

Thanks to its artificial intelligence and suite of sensors, Paro can grow active or sleepy, show pleasure when held, and get angry when hit. He also understands simple words like greetings and compliments, and responds with calls and facial expressions.

"We have been building pet robots as examples of artificial emotional creatures since 1995," says Prof Shibata.

"When we engage physically with a pet robot, it stimulates our affection. Through physical interaction, we develop attachment to the pet robot."

Prof Shibata spent $9m (£5.6m) developing the stationary Paro, which retails for about $2,800 (£1,735). But with only a few thousand sold, like Aibo before it, the robot still remains far from a commercial success.

Robots may have transformed the way cars are made, but for effective care technology, so far, they have only proved useful as a back-up to human care, no matter what Japan's social services mandarins must be dreaming.

Thinking About Egypt

2011-02-04T08:49:00.000-05:00

People power is being expressed in Egypt.

Will it lead to a new and more democratic system in Egypt?

WIll it lead to a new authoritarianism under Islamic fundamentalism?

One thing is for sure, it will depend on Egypt and not outside powers. I can only watch and listen and hope for the best. One of the human race's most amazing civilizations may be at a turning point after three decades of stagnant corruption that has been supported by western powers as well as by Arab elites loving the power they have had. Now it is time for the Arab street to have their say.

We shall see, but I am always an optimist.

One Child Policy Posters

2011-01-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

We are doing a Flashpoint http://flashpointtv.blogspot.com/ episode today on the "one child policy" and I happened to see these posters that I liked.

Extremely Cold Weather Coming to Vermont

2011-01-21T07:26:00.000-05:00

http://blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/weather/2011/01/20/coldest-weather-in-two-years-coming-to-vermont/

Coldest weather in two years coming to Vermont

5:18 AM Thu., January 20, 2011 | Permalink

By Matt Sutkoski

Brisk. Bracing. Nippy. Chilly. Frosty.
OK, enough with the euphemisms. It’s going to be horribly, impossibly, annoyingly frigid in the upcoming days. I think it will be the worst cold wave in two years at least.

Noah Chute bundles up on a subzero morning earlier this week in Burlington. An even stronger cold snap is due this weekend. Photo by Glenn Russell of the Burlington Free Press

The nadir will come early Monday morning, when I think Burlington could touch 20 below and the remote cold hollows in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom could flirt with 40 below.
Here’s how I think things will play out: A small storm will zip by us tomorow morning, and a cold front will bring the first surge of cold air in. It won’t be that bad, with temperatures falling to zero by Saturday morning, then struggling up to 10 degrees or so Saturday afternoon.
Then Cold Surge Two comes in Saturday evening. This will be a blast of Arctic air, and by Sunday morning, it will be in the upper single numbers to mid teens below zero in most of Vermont.

This photo I snapped around Smugglers Notch Sunday just makes me feel cold. If you really want to feel cold, wait until you feel the Arctic blast due to arrive in Vermont this weekend.

Most of us will stay at or below zero all day Sunday. So for wimps like me, we’ll be faced with perfect snow conditions for winter sports, just begging us to go outside and enjoy it. But we’ll stay indoors because the intense cold will make us want to hide under a gigantic stack of warm blankets.
Sunday night looks like it might be clear, with not much wind to speak of. That’s a classic set up for the cold temperatures I think will hit. The auto mechanics are going to have a FIELD DAY Monday, rushing around trying to fix the zillions of cars I know won’t start.
Hint: Keep the gas tanks completely full in your vehicles this weekend. That will help.
Monday morning’s record low for the date in Burlington is 22 below, set in 1948, so although it will be cold Monday morning, it’s iffy on whether we’ll break a record.
The coldest temperature on record in Burlington is 30 below on Jan. 15, 1957 and Feb. 12, 1979. It won’t get that cold in Burlington during this frigid snap, so I guess that’s a plus.
The cold will ease early next week, but I don’t see any signs of warm weather coming.

Resolutions for 2011

2011-01-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

In no particular order:

Be nicer to everyone.
Use more peaceful language.
Eat less.
Work more efficiently.
Work with my younger debaters more.
Give more complete comments on the assignments of my students.
Encourage people more.
Give criticism in a more positive way.
Watch more documentaries.
Know my limits for debate projects and thus say "no" once in a while.
Read more non-fiction.

Captain Beefheart has Left the Stage

2010-12-18T03:58:00.000-05:00

Trout Mask Replica is considered his masterpiece

Beefheart's distinctive growl fronted an influential avant-garde rock band
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12024652

Don Van Vliet, aka 'Captain Beefheart', dies aged 69

American musician and painter Don Van Vliet, best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart, has died aged 69.

Van Vliet's death in California, from complications from multiple sclerosis, was announced by the Michael Werner Gallery in New York.

Van Vliet was "one of the most original recording artists of his time", the gallery said in a statement.

He rose to fame in the 1960s with a unique style of blues-inspired rock & roll, later devoting himself to art.

Artists including Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The White Stripes are among those who have cited him as an influence.

'Experimental rock & roll'

"Don Van Vliet was a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts," the gallery said in a statement.

"He is perhaps best known as the incomparable Captain Beefheart who, together with his Magic Band, rose to prominence in the 1960s with a totally unique style of blues-inspired, experimental rock & roll."

"This would ultimately secure Van Vliet's place in music history as one of the most original recording artists of his time. After two decades in the spotlight as an avant-garde composer and performer, Van Vliet retired from performing to devote himself wholeheartedly to painting and drawing."

"Like his music, Van Vliet's lush paintings are the product of a truly rare and unique vision."

Van Vliet combined peculiar tones with music that drew on blues, jazz, psychedelia and a barrage of other genres.

The musician recorded under the name of Captain Beefheart with members of the Magic Band through 1982.

Captain Beefheart's first two releases with the Magic Band received positive reviews from music connoisseurs but did not connect with the wider public.

But he soon began a close creative relationship with Frank Zappa, a former high school classmate, who helped him forge his way toward redefining popular music.

In recent years, Van Vliet devoted himself to painting and drawing.

A painting by the musician was on sale at the Michael Werner Gallery earlier this month at a price of $40,000 (£26,000).

Van Vliet is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Jan Van Vliet.

Video for a Snowy Friday Afternoon

2010-12-17T07:52:00.000-05:00

§tereop§i§ from Champagne Valentine on Vimeo.

§tereop§i§ is an exploration through an alien couture landscape, using echoes and ghosts to leave time in the residue of a digital harp performance. This combination of the universal based fashion of Pauline van Dongen and Champagne Valentine invites you into a backwards galaxy.

http://vimeo.com/17685206

Where in the World Am I?

2010-12-11T08:53:00.000-05:00

Follow along as I blaze a global trail to promote debating!

My calendar charts my movements and events and gives you an idea of what I am up to. Feel free to check it out if you are trying to find me!

http://debate.uvm.edu/tunacalendar.html

Latest Spelling Errors from Asia

2010-12-02T15:34:00.001-05:00

I always love these. Thanks to Engrish.com. Go there and enjoy.

Thanksgiving Day 2010 The Real Way

2010-11-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

I played this many times during my 17 years at WRUV-FM Burlington. As I sit here watching snow fall in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I thought of it again. Perhaps more true now than ever.

William always had a way.

"...the insect version of Pearl Harbor"

2010-10-30T18:18:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

"Japanese Giant Hornets: World's most dangerous insect?"

http://www.helium.com/items/1992353-japanese-giant-hornets-worlds-most-dangerous-insect

Killer insect to invade USA?

26.10.2010

The Japanese Giant Hornet is one of the most dangerous insects in the world. Two stings is enough to kill most people and shoots flesh-melting acid at the face of its victims - usually at the eyes. This five-ayes monster is endemic in the rural areas of Japan.

In his article "Japanese Giant Hornets: World's most dangerous insect?" US based researcher Terrence Aym* claims that the Japanese giant hornet, or Vespa mandarinia japonica, a subspecies of the Asian giant hornet, is "one of the most aggressive insects in the world", which "can shoot flesh-melting acid at you" and "it aims for the eyes", while "only a couple of stings is enough to kill most people".

The Japanese Giant Hornet, according to the researcher, has a wingspan of over 6 centimetres and is over 4 centimetres long. Three eyes on the top of its head sit between two large compound eyes. The insect has a dark brown thorax, a yellow head and a brown and yellow striped abdomen. The Japanese call it "Suzumebachi", or Giant Sparrow Bee.

What comes next in the article is terrifying. "Imagine that this bug is a relentless killer, single-minded in destroying whatever enemy might threaten it - including you, if it perceives you as a threat". However, "you don't have to imagine it. It's real".

The advice the author gives, is "run" and "seek the nearest shelter as fast as you can", indicating that there are stories of just 30 hornets destroying hives of 30,000 bees - one thousand bees each. Not that this would do you much good - the hornet can fly at 25 mph! When it attacks, it releases a chemical (an airborne pheromone) which sends a message back to base, rallying the hornet's nest. "Only a few stings will result in almost certain death," according to the article.

This horrific killer has a veritable arsenal of weapons. The highly venomous sting is only one. The other is a stream of flesh-melting acid which it squirts into the eyes of the victims. Blinded, they can do nothing to defend themselves against the enraged swarm.

This insect is responsible for dozens of deaths every year in Japan, along with hundreds of hospitalised cases. The Japanese are now marketing an energizing drink called Vaam, which apparently contains a synthetic formula of the Japanese Giant Hornet's strength and stamina.

And now for the bad news: people are starting to keep these monsters as pets in the USA. Just imagine if a pregnant Queen escapes and establishes a colony, making the Japanese Giant Hornet endemic in the United States of America.

"If that happened," claims Terrence Aym, "it would be the insect version of Pearl Harbor".

Terrence Aym

One Way Trip to Mars

2010-10-28T06:36:00.000-05:00

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1324192/Nasa-plan-Hundred-Year-Starship--mission-astronauts-Mars-leave-forever.html

The Hundred Year Starship: The Nasa mission that will take astronauts to Mars and leave them there forever

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 8:26 AM on 28th October 2010

The mission is to boldly go where no man has gone before – on a flight to Mars.
The snag is that you’d never come back.
The U.S. space agency Nasa is actively investigating the possibility of humans colonising other worlds such as the Red Planet in an ambitious project named the Hundred Years Starship.
The settlers would be sent supplies from Earth, but would go on the understanding that it would be too costly to make the return trip.
NASA Ames Director Pete Worden revealed that one of NASA’s main research centres, Ames Research Centre, has received £1million funding to start work on the project.
The research team has also received an additional $100,000 from Nasa.

Astronauts would be marooned on the planet's surface and would never be able to return home due to cost

An artist's impression of a Mars base manned by astronauts who would have to learn to be self-sufficient

‘You heard it here,” Worden said at ‘Long Conversation,’ an event in San Francisco. ‘We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund.’
He added: ‘The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds. Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.’
Worden said he has discussed the potential price tag for one-way trips to Mars with Google co-founder Larry Page, telling him such a mission could be done for $10 billion.
He said said: ‘His response was, “Can you get it down to $1 [billion] or $2billion?” So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price.’

Depending on the position of Mars in its orbit around the sun, its distance from Earth varies between 34million and 250million miles.
The most recent unmanned mission there was Nasa’s Phoenix lander, which launched in August 2007 and landed on the planet’s north polar cap in May the following year.
Experts say a nuclear-fuelled rocket could shorten the journey to about four months.
Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is the most likely to have substantial quantities of water, making it the best bet for sustaining life. But it is a forbidding place to set up home.
Temperatures plummet way below freezing in some parts. The thin atmosphere would be a problem as it is mostly carbon dioxide, so oxygen supplies are a must.
Worden also suggested that new technologies such as synthetic biology and alterations to the human genome could also be explored ahead of the mission.
And he said that he believed the mission should visit Mars’ moons first, where scientists can do extensive telerobotics exploration of the planet. He claims that humans could be on Mars' moons by 2030.

24 HOURS AND 41 MINUTES IN A DAY

Despite being known as the Red Planet, the colour of Mars is closer to butterscotch.
Mars has the highest known mountain in the Solar System – the 17-mile-high Olympus Mons – which is three times the size of Everest.
It is half the size of Earth, has two polar ice caps and has similar seasons to our planet. The Martian day is only 41 minutes longer than the day on Earth.
The song Life on Mars? was written by David Bowie as a parody of My Way by Frank Sinatra. Bowie wrote it after shopping for shoes in Beckenham High Street. It went to number three in the charts in 1973.
Nasa claims that definitive proof of life on Mars will be announced this year from analysis of chunks of the planet brought back to Earth.
In HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, Martians landed in Woking, Surrey.

News of the Hundred Years Starship comes as new research found that a one-way human mission to Mars is technologically feasible and would be a cheaper option than bringing astronauts back.
Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, scientists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, say that the envision sending four volunteer astronauts on the first mission to permanently colonise Mars.
They write: ‘A one-way human mission to Mars would not be a fixed duration project as in the Apollo program, but the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet.’
The astronauts would be sent supplies from Earth on a regular basis but they would be expected to become self-sufficient on the red planet’s surface as soon as possible.
They say: There are many reasons why a human colony on Mars is a desirable goal, scientifically and politically. The strategy of one-way missions brings this goal within technological and financial feasibility.
‘Nevertheless, to attain it would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays being replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.’

An artist's impression of the 100 Year Starship, the craft that would take astronauts to colonise other planets

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit work on the planet's surface. One day humans could be working alongside the robotic probe

They admit that the mission would come with ‘ethical considerations’ with the general public feeling that the Martian pioneers had been abandoned to their fate or sacrificed.
But they argue that these first inhabitants of Mars would be going in much the same spirit as the first white settlers of North America – travelling to a distant land, knowing that they will never return home.
They say: ‘Explorers such as Columbus, Frobisher, Scott and Amundsen, while not embarking on their voyages with the intention of staying at their destination, nevertheless took huge personal risks to explore new lands, in the knowledge that there was a significant likelihood that they would perish in the attempt.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1324192/Nasa-plan-Hundred-Year-Starship--mission-astronauts-Mars-leave-forever.html#ixzz13eVoNSqS

Creepiest Island I Know Of

2010-10-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

From http://weburbanist.com/2010/10/06/mexicos-creepiest-tourist-destination-island-of-the-dolls/

Mexico’s Creepiest Tourist Destination: Island of the Dolls

By Delana in Abandoned Places, Guerilla Action & Art, Travel & Places

On a dark and creepy island in the canals of Xochimico near Mexico City sits what might be the world’s strangest and scariest tourist attraction ever. However, this sad island was never meant to be a stop on tourists’ holiday itineraries. The Island of the Dolls was dedicated to the lost soul of a poor little girl who met her fate too soon.

(image via: PlanetOddity)

The Island of the Dolls (Isla de las Munecas) sits in the canals south of Mexico City and is the current home of hundreds of terrifying, mutilated dolls. Their severed limbs, decapitated heads, and blank eyes adorn trees, fences and nearly every available surface. The dolls appear menacing even in the bright light of midday, but in the dark they are particularly haunting.

(images via: Zen Skillicorn)

Not surprisingly, the island’s origins lie in tragedy. The story goes that the island’s only inhabitant, Don Julian Santana, found the body of a drowned child in the canal some 50 years ago. He was haunted by her death, so when he saw a doll floating by in the canal soon after, he hung it in a tree to please the girl. He hoped to both appease her tortured soul and protect the island from further evil.

(images via: Tarzan)

One doll in a tree, however, was not enough to ease Santana’s troubled mind. He continued to fish dolls and doll parts out of the canal whenever he saw them, hanging each one carefully on the island. There weren’t enough canal dolls to satisfy Santana’s tortured spirit, so he began scavenging more from trash heaps on his rare trips away from home. Later in life, he began trading his home-grown fruits and vegetables for dolls.

(image via: Tarzan)

Many stories have been associated with the island over the years. A popular tale was that Don Julian had gone mad and believed the dolls to be real children who he pulled from the canal and tried to revive. But the truth, as told by his family members who now run the island as a tourist attraction, is that Don Julian simply believed the island was haunted by the spirit of the little girl. For reasons only known to Don Julian himself, he believed that he could make the dead girl happy and keep evil at bay by hanging discarded dolls in all of the island’s trees.

(image via: PlanetOddity)

The story took a particularly sinister turn in 2001 when Don Julian drowned in the canal just like the little girl. Many people said that the dolls, inhabited by tortured spirits, conspired to murder the old man. Others believe that Santana’s death was an accident and that since his passing, the dolls have taken over his role as the island’s caretaker.

(image via: PlanetOddity)

Although the island did not receive much tourist attention during Don Julian’s lifetime, it has become a well-known attraction since then. International television crews have filmed there several times, including one show that claimed to find proof the island is haunted.

(image via: Troels Myrup)

Getting to the island is a long and difficult task, but walking among the creepy dolls is an experience like no other. Most, if not all, of these dolls were rejected by their previous owners for various reasons. Severed limbs and body-less heads hang side-by-side with whole, sun-bleached dolls. Mold covers some, while others are missing nearly all of their artificial hair. Spiders and insects have taken up residence in the hollow parts of most of the dolls.

(images via: Esparta Palma and Bec Plumbe)

Although Don Julian’s sentiment was innocent and admirable, the doll graveyard he created is undeniably creepy. Soulless eyes follow visitors as they move around the small island (which is actually a chinampa, or artificial floating garden), and many swear that they can hear the dolls whispering to them. This labor of love (or fear, as it were) has resulted in an accidental sensation amongst those who admire the bizarre and twisted side of tourism.

"The Present is Narrower Than Ever," William Gibson

2010-10-14T06:45:00.000-05:00

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11502715

12 October 2010 Last updated at 05:36 ET

William Gibson says the future is right here, right now

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Drones could force changes in the way cities are built, suggests William Gibson.

The rapid rate of technological and social change means the future comes crashing towards us faster than ever before, says visionary science fiction author William Gibson.

"In the 1960s I think that in some sense the present was actually about three or four years long," he said, "because in three or four years relatively little would change."
That stood in sharp contrast to late 2010, he said, when big changes had become a daily occurrence.
"Now the present is the length of a news cycle some days," he said in an interview with BBC News.
That ferocious rate of change made writing about the present day exciting, he said, and explained why his current novel, Zero History, is set around about now.
"The present is really of no width whatever," he said.
Given that, he said, it was becoming hard to use the tricks employed by earlier generations of science fiction writers, which involved extrapolating current technology trends to see where they would go.
Doing this with current technologies was impossible because real world events were likely to overtake anything a writer could conceive long before a book was finished and on the shop shelves.

“The prefix cyber is going the way of the prefix electro”

End Quote William Gibson

For instance, he said, the flying drones depicted in Zero History and used for surveillance have the potential to inflict big changes very quickly once they become cheap and ubiquitous.

"They are actually going to change the landscapes of cities," he said.
"People in tall buildings, particularly in cities like New York or Chicago, have been living lives of utter privacy quite unconcerned that anyone might be looking in the window."
"That's just not going to be the case anymore," he said.
Fast reaction Realising how things were speeding up made Mr Gibson take a conscious decision to recalibrate what he described as his sense of "contemporary weirdness" that fuels his writing.
"By the time I had finished my sixth novel I had this nagging sense that my yardstick of contemporary weirdness was really an 80s yardstick," he said.
"There's a sense in which I need the formal official metric unit of contemporary weirdness in order to know how much I can successfully expand that and induce science fiction's characteristic cognitive dissonance in the reader.
"What I actually found was that this contemporary weirdness was incredibly expansive and the deeper I looked into it the weirder it got," he said.
Zero History is at face value a story about a search for the elusive maker of a coveted series of designer clothes. The book is also an exploration of the trends that shape contemporary society, how they can be manipulated and how people can fashion a life in the face of such rapid change.
"One of the economic units of this society is being 'in the know' or being able to convince people that you are 'in the know'," said Mr Gibson.
"My reading of these three recent books and to an extent the earlier books is that there is always the suggestion there that there's not actually a know and the whole thing may be kind of mutually agreed upon snake oil."

The present has become a narrow place less than a day wide, says Gibson

There was also another reason why setting a story in the present day is more attractive than looking into a future even half a century away. This was because, said Mr Gibson, using that setting would necessitate explaining away present-day problems such as global warming.
"If I write something set 60 years in the future I am going to have to explain how humanity got there and that's becoming quite a big job," he said.
"Compared to that further investigation of our alien present seems actually way more doable and it may be more fun to do because it shakes all sorts of people out of the woodwork that want to talk to me," he added.
The rapid pace of change of the present day could also spell curtains for the central idea of the three cyberpunk books, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, the "consensual hallucination" of cyberspace.
"Cyberspace is colonising what we used to think of as the real world," he said. "I think that our grandchildren will probably regard the distinction we make between what we call the real world and what they think of as simply the world as the quaintest and most incomprehensible thing about us."
"The prefix cyber is going the way of the prefix electro," he said.

Rabid Vampire Bats of Peru

2010-08-14T04:06:00.000-05:00

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10960389

13 August 2010 Last updated at 07:05 GMT

Vampire bats feed on the blood of mammals while they sleep

Peru's health ministry has sent emergency teams to a remote Amazon region to battle an outbreak of rabies spread by vampire bats.

Four children in the Awajun indigenous tribe died after being bitten by the bloodsucking mammals.
Health workers have given rabies vaccine to more than 500 people who have also been attacked.
Some experts have linked mass vampire bat attacks on people in the Amazon to deforestation.
The rabies outbreak is focused on the community of Urakusa in the north-eastern Peruvian Amazon, close to the border with Ecuador.
The indigenous community appealed for help after being unable to explain the illness that had killed the children.
The health ministry said it had sent three medical teams to treat and vaccinate people who had been bitten.
Most of the affected population had now been vaccinated, it said, although a few had refused treatment.
Vampire bats usually feed on wildlife or livestock, but are sometimes known to turn to humans for food, particularly in areas where their rainforest habitat has been destroyed.
Some local people have suggested this latest outbreak of attacks may be linked to the unusually low temperatures the Peruvian Amazon in recent years.

You Cannot Trump Luck

2010-08-03T08:57:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it all works out perfectly. Not always, but sometimes.

Latest Laughs from Engrish.com

2010-07-31T08:58:00.000-05:00

It is one of my favorite website, so every few months I go to http://engrish.com and check out the new postings. There is a never-ending stream of funny stuff, and mainly funny because it wasn't meant to be funny. Latest favorites include these.

Relocating to Europe for Six Weeks

2010-06-30T11:36:00.000-05:00

Global Debate (that means me) will change its base of operations and leave America for six weeks in Europe. The US State Department is flying me over in business class today and I will return on August 15. I want to thank the State Department for their support, along with the USA Embassy in Slovenia, the USA Embassy in Serbia, ZIP Slovenia, Open Communication Serbia as well as the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe.

During this trip, I will:

Teach at the Former Yugoslavia Debate Conference, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Teach at the World Schools Debate Academy in Kranska Gora, Slovenia for a week. http://debate.uvm.edu/wsda.html
Take a couple of weeks off and relax in Slovenia, or perhaps do a side trip to Florence.
Teach at the Serbia Summer Debate Academy, for university students, at the Dobradolac Spa north of Belgrade http://www.dobrodolac.com/wellnes_spa.html .

Then, it is back to Vermont for:

Teaching exchange students from China how to debate.
Teaching at East Debate Institute WUDC session. http://debate.uvm.edu/edi.htm
School starts after one day off.

It all sounds exciting to me! Come along as I report on these events and many, many more from all over the world. Don't forget, you are welcome to send your stories to me!

Eat Your Heart Out, Robert Tilton

2010-06-29T15:05:00.000-05:00

Somebody else is making your old racket pay off for them!

Puertecitos Forever Slide Show

2010-05-22T13:57:00.002-05:00

Puertecitos Forever from Alfred Snider on Vimeo.

I have made a slideshow with musical accompaniment to share with those who are not here, who have been here but are not here now and for those who might wish to come here in the future. These photos are from the last six years.

It can be located at http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/watch/puertecitosforever.m4v

If you download it you can watch it through iTunes.

Thanks for the soundtrack go to Ivy, and the song is “Edge of the ocean.”

Fun in Mexico for FIVE Weeks

2010-05-20T14:17:00.000-05:00

I am here in Puertecitos, Baja California, Mexico for five weeks.

Here are two pictures from in front of the house, one at low tide and one at high tide.

My blog is at:
http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/mex/Welcome.html

Many people have been having a hard time understanding the difference, given that most tides are a bit lower than this, but this situation (normal in Puertecitos) is quite specific, and normal.

The entire bay empties out twice a day, and at this level the amount of water moved is huge and the energy required to do that is amazing.

The shelling this morning was excellent, the swimming this afternoon was very, very nice.

Just another reason why this is a beautiful and wonderful place to vacation.